


Denial

by Lazare_syn



Series: Denial [1]
Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Ambiguous Feelings, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Crushes, Deft is Bad At Feelings, Deft whining to everyone about Meiko, Fluff, Gen, Humor, I'm Sorry, Implied Past Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 13:53:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14045652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazare_syn/pseuds/Lazare_syn
Summary: Meiko might like Deft. Deft doesn’t like Meiko, probably.Or: Hyukkyu has a crisis and no one is helpful. Especially not himself.





	Denial

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is supposed to take place sometime in 2016, back when Deft was still on EDG, but I have no idea exactly when. Please forgive the egregious timeline warping that's probably going on in this thing.
> 
> Azure_M and viva were kind enough to do a [Chinese translation](http://solardust.lofter.com/post/1f56b3cc_12a16e273#) of this fic!

Tian Ye has fallen asleep in Hyukkyu’s change room stall again. Hyukkyu sighs and pushes him over so he can sit down and change.

Ming Kai and Tong Yang snicker as they pass by, causing Hyukkyu to look down and blush. He shakes Tian Ye until he wakes up with a start.

“W-what is it?” Tian Ye mumbles in Chinese.

“Stop falling asleep in my stall,” Hyukkyu tells him. He tell his accent is slurring the Chinese words strangely by the way Tian Ye laughs at him in response. Or maybe he’s just being annoying again. “Go sleep in your own stall.”

"Why? Yours is bigger and comfier.”

“They’re the exact same. Now go away, you’re bothering me.” Hyukkyu shakes Tian Ye again, trying to get him to leave, but Tian Ye just curls up against Hyukkyu even more.

“Nope.” Tian Ye closes his eyes again.

Hyukkyu gives up and resumes changing.

On the ride back to the gaming house, Tian Ye cuddles Hyukkyu’s arm as he falls asleep again, causing their coaches and teammates to coo over how precious he and Hyukkyu look and Hyukkyu to wonder how many years in jail he would get for murdering a car full of people.

People tend to be very touchy around Hyukkyu in general, much to his despair, but Tian Ye is on a whole new level sometimes. When he’s not poking Hyukkyu to get his attention or tugging at his arm to try and drag him somewhere, he’s clinging to Hyukkyu and whining for his attention.

Hyukkyu feels like he gives Tian Ye plenty of attention as is, but Tian Ye is apparently never satisfied. It’s exhausting.

“Hyuk~kyu,” he’ll chant in a way that disturbingly reminds Hyukkyu of Seungbin. “Stop ignoring me! I want to show you something!”

When Hyukkyu complains about it to Wonseok, though, Wonseok just shrugs.

“Maybe there’s a reason he always wants to be with you,” he offers.

“Yeah, because he loves annoying me, the brat,” Hyukkyu grumbles. Saying that makes him feel old, all of a sudden. He’s no longer the baby of the team, running to Gwanhyung and Cheonju for comfort after every loss. He’s on the other side, now.

“I think it’s actually because he likes you,” Wonseok offers after a moment of silence. Hyukkyu stares at him.

“What do you mean by that,” he says so flatly it’s not even a question anymore. _Don’t say what I think you’re about to say_ , he prays.

“I think Tian Ye has a crush on you,” Wonseok says it anyway. “Kind of like how Seungbin-”

“Don’t talk to me about Seungbin right now,” Hyukkyu huffs, rubbing his temples. “Especially not after bringing up how Tian Ye has a crush on me, of all things.”

“Sorry,” Wonseok looks apologetic. Cheonju would have pushed it, and so would Seungbin, for that matter, but luckily Wonseok is far more accommodating when Hyukkyu doesn’t want to talk about something. “Either way, let up on the poor kid a little bit. Let him down gently if you don’t like him back, but I feel like you might accidentally break his heart at some point if it keeps going like this.”

“Why are you speaking Korean?” Tian Ye asks, suddenly appearing behind Wonseok. Wonseok startles, and Hyukkyu does his best to not have a heart attack right there and then.

“Important business,” Hyukkyu tells him in English. “Go away.”

 Tian Ye pouts, but leaves them alone, perhaps realizing that he intruded in on a personal conversation. As he leaves, Wonseok gives Hyukkyu a Look.

 “That’s exactly what I was talking about,” is all he says. Hyukkyu doesn’t reply, he feels a small spark of guilt anyway.

Despite Wonseok’s advice, Hyukkyu vows to ignore Tian Ye even harder after that. He manages it for about a day before Tian Ye tackles him to the ground after scrims and demands they go to dinner together.

Wonseok just shakes his head at them.

Things more or less go back to normal after that. Tian Ye continues to pester Hyukkyu at every available moment, Hyukkyu puts up with him but doesn’t ever address the whole feelings thing, and the rest of EDG jokingly calls them the cutest couple in the LPL.

This happy state of affairs ends when Hyukkyu gets invited out to dinner with Cheonju and Seungbin. His throat tightens as he stares at Cheonju’s cheerful text,

 _Did Cheonju invite you out tonight?_ Hyukkyu texts Wonseok instead of replying.

 _No? Why?_ Wonseok replies a couple of minutes later.

_Because he just asked me to get dinner with him and Seungbin._

_Oh no...Do you want to go?_

Hyukkyu hesitates. What does he want? From the corner of his eye, he spots Tian Ye heading in his direction.

_Actually, maybe I do._

Sitting across from Seungbin is still nerve-wracking, even after all this time. For his part, even though he refuses to look at Hyukkyu and keeps kicking the chairs around him, Seungbin seems to be dealing with it with far more grace and maturity than he would have back on Samsung. Maybe China has been good for him.

“So, I heard you have a new boytoy now,” Seungbin says snidely after the waiter takes their order.

Never mind.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hyukkyu says coolly. “Anything Wonseok tells you is a lie.”

“Wonseok? He hasn’t said a thing to me in weeks. No, I’m getting my info from the Internet.”

Seungbin holds up his phone, which shows a picture of Tian Ye sleeping soundly on Hyukkyu’s shoulder as they huddle together in Hyukkyu’s change room stall.

Hyukkyu feels a flare of panic. “Someone took a picture of that?”

“Ha! So you admit it!” Seungbin leaps up and points a finger dramatically at Hyukkyu. Next to him, Cheonju looks between the two AD Carries with amusement, not even bothering to try and calm Seungbin down. Hyukkyu is starting to suspect he planned this whole thing for his own sick amusement.

“I admit nothing. Tian Ye likes to bother me, that’s all. Not unlike a certain someone…”

“That’s hardly a good example when you’re trying to deny the two of you aren’t a couple,” Cheonju says, looking highly entertained. Hyukkyu wants to strangle him.

Seungbin is oblivious to everything that has just been said. “Seriously, Hyukkyu? This guy? He looks like a little kid! I didn’t expect a lot from you after I caught you and Rekkles making out, but I didn’t expect you to become a cradle robber!”

“Tian Ye is eighteen,” Hyukkyu protests, then shuts his mouth when he realizes the mistake he’s just made. Cheonju’s grin just widens.

“Honestly, Hyukkyu,” Seungbin barrels on. “You could have told us you two were an item. I question your taste in men, or boys in this case, but I’d still accept it if that’s what makes you happy. I’m over you.”

From the way he’s fidgeting and still refusing to look at Hyukkyu, that’s probably not entirely true. Hyukkyu feels a brief pang of pity for him, but quickly shoves it down.

“I swear that Tian Ye and I are not together,” he says through gritted teeth. “Also, Martin and I have never made out before in our lives, so I don’t know what you were talking about there.”

“Sure,” Seungbin says sarcastically, but the rest of his reply is halted by the arrival of their food.

Hyukkyu eats quickly, hoping Seungbin and Cheonju will be too busy eating as well to ask about him and Tian Ye any more. Luckily, they move on to other topics when they do talk, although Cheonju keeps shooting Hyukkyu knowing looks.

When Hyukkyu returns home, he’s in a foul mood. Seungbin had continued to pester him after their meal about his “jailbait boyfriend,” ignoring all protests from Hyukkyu to the contrary, until he couldn’t take it anymore and told them he had scrims to get to.

Tian Ye is there to greet him. “Hyukkyu, I’m bored-” is all he can get out before Hyukkyu brushes past him with a harsh mutter and stomps into his room.

The next day, Ming Kai makes him apologize to a sniffling Tian Ye in front of the whole team.

“I want a new team,” Hyukkyu complains to Sehyeong and Jihoon when he meets up with them for lunch a week later. This time, he had been the one to extend the invitation to them, feeling the need to escape from Tian Ye’s pestering, Wonseok’s knowing looks, and Ming Kai’s lectures about hurting people’s feelings (as if he knew what the hell he was talking about when it came to feelings).

They look at him skeptically.

“I can’t handle this team atmosphere anymore. I just want to play League, and here’s Tian Ye and everyone else, getting...feelings involved all the time.” Hyukkyu gestures with his chopsticks, hoping to make them understand what he’s going through.

From the looks of it, they are not convinced.

“Aren’t you blowing this whole thing out of proportion?” Sehyeong says in that blunt, unsympathetic way of his that Hyukkyu both loves and loathes. Jihoon is a bit more diplomatic.

“I get that you don’t want to be distracted from League, but...I think you should talk to Tian Ye sometime. Wonseok is right, you could really hurt him if you continue to ignore him like this,” he says gently.

“But I don’t ignore him! I put up with him most of the time, don’t I? Why doesn’t anyone care about my feelings about all this?” Hyukkyu can feel himself slipping into the whiny voice he used to put on when he didn’t get his way back in the MVP Blue days. Jihoon smiles at him, but this time it’s patronizing instead of understanding.

“We do care about your feelings, Hyukkyu,” Jihoon says, taking Hyukkyu’s hand in his own. “We care about you very much. And if you want to leave EDG and find a new team next season, that’s your decision. But it’s obvious that this...thing with Tian Ye is taking up a lot of your thoughts, and Sehyeong and I think you should try to address it directly instead of avoiding it and complaining to other people about it.”

“First of all, I don’t think that, so don’t include me in your advice, Jihoon,” Sehyeong drawls. “Second of all, you seriously went to Seungbin and Cheonju before us?”

Jihoon looks surprised. “You talked to Seungbin about this?”

"More like he and Cheonju ganged up on me and called me a cradle-robber,” Hyukkyu grumbles.

Jihoon sighs at that, while Sehyeong snickers. “Well, Tian Ye does look at little young…”

“He’s eighteen, okay?” Hyukkyu turns bright red. “Not that it matters, because I don’t like him that way and have no intention of ever liking him like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”.

“Then tell him that. Nicely.”

“Then he’ll just pester me even more. Besides, I don’t even know if he actually has a crush on me. Wonseok just said he suspects that that’s the case.”

“Then why are you complaining about it so much?” Sehyeong asks.

“Because Tian Ye won’t stop bugging me and I can’t stop thinking about what Wonseok said maybe being true!” Hyukkyu snaps, his usually soft voice echoing around the relatively empty restaurant. Everyone turns to stare at their table. Hyukkyu turns bright red and slumps down in his seat.

Come to think of it, Hyukkyu ponders, this is all Wonseok’s fault.

“Come to think of it, this is all your fault,” Hyukkyu tells Wonseok the next night. Wonseok just lets out a long, gusty sigh.

“Look....Hyukkyu. I initially said it as kind of a joke, but now I’m not so sure where your relationship is. From both yours and Tian Ye’s ends.”

Hyukkyu stares at him. “You...said it as a joke,” he says, voice devoid of all emotion.

“Well, maybe joke wasn’t the right word...More like, I didn’t expect you to take my words so much to heart.”

“How could I not? You said Tian Ye might have a crush on me and that I should talk to him about it!”

“That’s not something you should be obsessing over all the time. Especially if you really don’t like him back.”

“I don’t,” Hyukkyu says stubbornly. If there’s one thing he knows, it’s that. “But I don’t want to talk to Tian Ye about it. He’ll probably just think _I’m_ the one with a crush on him and laugh at me.”

“But then he might leave you alone, right?” Wonseok points out.

"I don’t want him to leave me alone because he thinks I have a crush on him and is weirded out by it!”

“That’s what you’re doing with him right now.”

“No, that’s...that’s different from what I’m doing,” Hyukkyu lamely denies. “I just want him to stop bothering me all the time and focus more on the games, that’s all.”

 Wonseok just looks at him. After a moment of silence, Hyukkyu gets up and walks away, feeling more uncertain about his predicament than ever.

The catalyst for Hyukkyu finally talking to Tian Ye about his alleged feelings comes from an unusual source.

“Hi, Hyukkyu,” Martin says, eyes glazed over from tiredness and hair messy and unkempt. It’s 5am in Berlin right now, but it’s the only time Hyukkyu has free to chat with him this week without fear of interruption by nosy teammates. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” Hyukkyu says shyly, still stumbling over some of the English words as he speaks. He has both a Korean-to-English and an English-to-Korean translator ready, in case he and Martin run into some communication issues. They usually do. “How are you?”

“Good, good,” Martin lets out an enormous yawn. “Sorry, still a bit sleepy, haha.”

“Sleepy…” Hyukkyu is pretty sure what that means, but he plugs it into the translator anyway. “You’re still tired…”

“Yeah...That’s okay though. It’s worth it to see your beautiful face again.” Martin winks at him through the webcam.

Hyukkyu only catches about two-thirds of what Martin said, but it’s enough to make him blush. “Martin is very handsome too...Even with bad hair.”

“Bad hair?” Martin looks concerned as he brushes at his hair with his hands. “Is that better?” He asks eventually.

It’s not, but Hyukkyu doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. “Yes.”

“Oh, good.” Martin looks relieved. Hyukkyu wonders how out of it he is. “Anyway, what’s up? How’s EDG?”

“Good…We win our last three games.” Hyukkyu hesitates for a moment. Should he tell Martin about Tian Ye? “Some problems with...with teammate.”

“Your teammates?” Martin frowns at him in concern. “What’s the matter?”

Hyukkyu hesitates even more. “Support...he like me, but I don’t like him,” he hedges.

“Your support? The short cute one?”

“Yes...Meiko.” A part of Hyukkyu is annoyed at Martin for calling Tian Ye cute.

Martin snaps his fingers. “Yeah, Meiko! Are you saying he has a crush on you?”

“Yes...Maybe…”

“I see...And you don’t like him back, right?”

“No. But he keep clinging to me. Annoying.”

“Do you want him to stop clinging to you?”

“Yes. But no talk.” Hyukkyu hopes he’s getting across what he means to say.

“But you don’t want to talk to him about his feelings for you?” Martin questions.

“Yes.” Hyukkyu nods empathically.

“Well...That’s tough. Why not just tell him you’re not into him, though?”

Hyukkyu types “into him” into the translator. It’s not much help. Oh well. “No.”

Martin looks at him for a moment. “Okay...would it be easier for you to talk to Meiko if you said you already had a boyfriend?”

Hyukkyu starts. “I don’t…” His treacherous mind keeps bringing up images of Seungbin against his will. “No. No boyfriend.”

“Alright, alright, sorry,” Martin says, aware that he had just touched a raw nerve. “I didn’t meant to bring up anything bad.”

“It’s okay,” Hyukkyu says even though it isn’t, really. “But what do I do?” He knows he sounds a bit pathetic. He hopes Martin isn’t judging him for this display.

“I don’t know,” Martin admits. “I know you don’t want to, but I do think you should talk to Meiko about this. Just to clear the air.”

“Clear the air?”

“So everything’s okay between you two again.”

“Everything’s okay…” Is that even possible? Hyukkyu certainly wants it to be possible, but…

“Talk...embarrassing,” he admits quietly.

“I know, Hyukkyu,” Martin looks at him sympathetically. “But it’ll be worth it.”

Hyukkyu hangs his head in defeat. When even Martin, who barely knows who Tian Ye is, is telling him the same thing that all his teammates (past and present) have… \

“Okay. I talk with Meiko.”

Hyukkyu confronts Tian Ye that night. It’s past midnight, so Tian Ye is already in his pyjamas and getting ready for bed. He pauses as Hyukkyu approaches him, toothbrush hanging from his mouth impotently.

“Can we talk?” Hyukkyu asks him in English, parroting a phrase he heard a dozen times or so in a movie Martin had sent him to watch a while ago. It’s pretty much the only thing he retained from it.

“...Okay.” Tian Ye says eventually in Chinese. “After I brush my teeth, though.”

“Fine.”

Hyukkyu hears Tian Ye spit and rinse his mouth a couple minutes later. Nervousness almost overwhelms him; for a split second he contemplates running away, but that would just make things even more embarrassing and awkward.

Tian Te emerges from the bathroom slowly. He looks just as nervous as Hyukkyu feels. “What is it?”

“Do you…like me?” Hyukkyu chokes out in Chinese. He thinks he used the right word for “like” there.

For a moment, Tian Ye looks panicked. He doesn’t reply, eyes darting around like he’s trying to escape.

“Because...if you do...I don’t mind but I don’t-”

“No,” Tian Ye says firmly. “I don’t like you.”

Hyukkyu blinks. “You don’t?”

“Of course not,” Tian Ye’s voice is unyielding. “You’re just a teammate to me.”

“I, uh, okay then…” Hyukkyu backs out of Tian Ye’s room quickly. He should be relieved, shouldn’t he? Sure, Tian Ye might continue pestering him or he’ll leave Hyukkyu alone from now on due to this misunderstanding, but everyone said he’d feel better after talking things over with Tian Ye.

Why does it feel like a rock has settled into the pit of his stomach, then?

Hyukkyu rushes back to his room and tries not to think about anything.

The next morning, he gets a message from Martin.

  _So, how did it go? :)_

He thumbs over the text as Ming Kai approaches him.

“Tian Ye won’t be at practice today,” Ming Kai tells him. “He’s sick.”

Hyukkyu feels sick, too. Sick to his stomach.

He doesn’t reply to Martin.

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don't know how this happened.


End file.
